Lamaze Lessons...

So, we went to our first Lamaze/"Complete Childbirth Education Class" and it was very informative.  Here's what I learned:

We were the second-to-last couple that arrived--giving us little choice in where to sit.  The couple we ended up sitting next to is due January 12, with a boy, and is also delivering at the same hospital I am!  How crazy is that???  Thankfully, we have different doctors and the boys will have different names...but "It's A Small World After All" was still playing in my head...

I am a wuss.  Even just the animations of birth made me a bit queasy.  Even a stuffed, err I don't know what to call it, "plushie" (?) of a placenta grossed me out.

Ryan's arms don't fit around me from behind, he can barely reach my belly now!!!  It was rather uncomfortable.  And, hilarious!

Sitting on the floor comfortably is pretty much impossible.  What with all the changes in my body and the knee surgery I had two years ago, it was very uncomfortable.

I've practiced similar breathing techniques before--that was encouraging!  I hold my breath in response to pain which is bad.  I will be working on that--in fact, I had the opportunity to work on that early this morning.  I had severe hip pain when returning from the bathroom around 5:00 am, it was so bad that I could hardly walk (I think it was related to all the sitting on the floor without back support/getting back up from the floor).  When I made it back to bed and lay down in a semi-comfortable position, I noticed that my first reaction was to tense up my whole body (well, that and wake Ryan up to comfort me...misery loves company, right?).  So, I decided I would take the opportunity to breathe through it.  I believe I was successful in relaxing my body in the face of that pain.  Unfortunately, it didn't make the pain go away, but I felt like I was practicing for Declan!  So, in spite of the pain, I felt like I accomplished something.  Yay me!

Finding out that I've done similar breathing before made me feel like the whole labor thing will be a bit more accomplishable.  It's not some foreign thing.  So far, I am really glad we've invested in these classes.  We shall see what other "lessons" I come away with in upcoming weeks!

TTFN and congrats to those of you brave enough to read this post...not knowing exactly what it would contain!

~N~